Originally Posted by
k8edu
Well said Chris! I came across this site yesterday in my search for bolt pricing and saw that there was a wealth of information floating around and likely to be at least a few people willing to help a newbie like me! I appreciate those who did! It was a last minute thing as I walked out my door for a weekend with my sisters. Not that I need to explain myself, but I had a legitimate reason for asking.
I have 2 sisters, we're in our late 20's and early 30's. We all sew, we're all crafty, and come from an extremely artsy/creative family (mostly educators, except for me, I'm the black sheep in medical sales). One of my sisters has 2 children, for which she has a hard time finding cool, modern clothes, blankets, burp cloths, etc. We've always gone to craft shows and said, "we should do this" so....we finally are. Our generation isn't interested in the things at craft shows that were cool in 1992. We want colorful, bright, polka dots, chevron, modern, but still cute. We are doing a few shows to test the waters and may go online, but we're starting at the local level first. We are spending the weekend, piecing together our business plan and making decisions. We are still in the process of getting our tax ID (SO a pain in the butt, btw. If anyone out there can help us with tax ID's, LLC's vs. partnerships, etc., preferably in Pennsylvania, we will love you forever!). With that being said, of course Riley Blake can't discuss pricing with us until we have that done. See the catch-22 there? Being the perfectionist that I am, I wanted to be as accurate as I could as I was laying the numbers out for the sisters. So....there you go. NOW you know me, you know my story, probably more than you ever wanted to know, and hopefully provided you with a legitimate reason for why I was asking. Thank you again to those who helped. I am the quilter of the group and I've seen some interesting posts as I was skimming the site. I look forward to reading more when I have some spare time!
Cheers!
Katie ☺
The first decision you have to make is are you going into business as a partnership or an LLC. Find a good CPA and discuss the various tax implications of both tax entities. After you know what type of business you're going to set up then you can get your federal EIN number. After you have that number then you can get a state tax ID. Generally wholesalers won't even talk to people that aren't actually in business. Once you have your business set up then you can start setting up wholesale accounts.
As to actual fabric pricing, it varies considerably from distributer to distributer. Most of them want a minimum initial order of $500 to $750 and then annual purchases of at least $1200 to keep your account open. If you're opening a quilt store that's not all that hard to do. If you're doing some kind of craft sales it's going to be a lot harder to use that much fabric in a year let alone every year.